re, and much
of it is collected from or supported by English experience. Monarchy,
it is said, has some faults, some bad tendencies, aristocracy others,
democracy, again, others; but England has shown that a Government can
be constructed in which these evil tendencies exactly check, balance,
and destroy one another--in which a good whole is constructed not
simply in spite of, but by means of, the counteracting defects of the
constituent parts.

Accordingly, it is believed that the principal characteristics of the
English Constitution are inapplicable in countries where the materials
for a monarchy or an aristocracy do not exist. That Constitution is
conceived to be the best imaginable use of the political elements which
the great majority of States in modern Europe inherited from the
mediaeval period. It is believed that out of these materials nothing
better can be made than the English Constitution; but it is also
believed that the essential parts of the English Constitution cannot be
made except from these materials. Now these elements are the accidents
of a period and a region; they belong only to one or two centuries in
human history, and to a few countries. The United States could not have
become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed
it, even if the component States had ratified it. The mystic reverence,
the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are
imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any
people. These semi-filial feelings in Government are inherited just as
the true filial feelings in common life. You might as well adopt a
father as make a monarchy: the special sentiment be longing to the one
is as incapable of voluntary creation as the peculiar affection
belonging to the other. If the practical part of the English
Constitution could only be made out of a curious accumulation of
mediaeval materials, its interest would be half historical, and its
imitability very confined.

No one can approach to an understanding of the English institutions, or
of others, which, being the growth of many centuries, exercise a wide
sway over mixed populations, unless he divide them into two classes. In
such constitutions there are two parts (not indeed separable with
microscopic accuracy, for the genius of great affairs abhors nicety of
division): first, those which excite and preserve the reverence of the
population--the DIGNIFIED parts, if I may so call th